


Cheat Day

by GuyOfShy



Series: Locked Tomb fics [3]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bickering, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuyOfShy/pseuds/GuyOfShy
Summary: Gideon convinces Harrow to take a break from practicing raising the dead and suggests practicing romance instead, before she blows out a blood vessel.Inspired by a reddit comment that said, and I quote: “They could get a house and a dog and a Netflix subscription. I just want them to be happy, dammit.” So here that is mostly.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Series: Locked Tomb fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937449
Comments: 6
Kudos: 92





	Cheat Day

Gideon paused in the doorway to Harrow’s study, not the least bit surprised to find her necromancer up to no good. She knew what had to be done and took a heavy breath, always finding this task intimidating. But such was the life of a cavalier, and the life she shared so intertwined with Harrowhark.

Intending to force her to surrender through boisterous positivity that she could only quiet by accepting it was Gideon’s standard course of action, and she moved to enact it but stopped when she saw the single bloody stream steadily dripping from her nose, the rest of her face flushed with crimson shade.

Harrowhark stood from her chair with one hand laid flat and firm on her ebony wood table, knuckles white as her face paint, her other hand flexing rigidly, fingers slowly snapping up as she rose a skeleton not taller in bulk, but denser: the same experiment she'd been testing the past day with the intention of compressing more osseous matter into the same amount of space. Gideon was present when she first described her thesis:

_"So,” hummed Gideon, “a superskeleton."_

_"In essence. Three times sturdier and stronger, if not more so. One may term that ‘super’."_

Gideon sure as hell termed it super, having sparred many a vicious bout with the standard fare boneman. The superskeleton rumbled as it assembled from the feet up. Harrow nearly had it all built together and now focused on compacting its ribcage together, drawing together curved and jagged bones as thick as Gideon's forearm. They trembled nearer like a jigsaw puzzle that didn't want to be finished, the final piece screaming "Where are you putting me?!" Harrow grunted from her throat and closed her fist tighter, nails digging into her palm as she dug the ribs into its core. She seethed silently and that almost convinced Gideon to shrink away and return later, knowing better than to bother her wife at the zenith of her concentration. But she'd be lying if she said she wasn't awed, and glad that the monstrosity was intended to squash some nameless enemy into a puddle of human rather than herself.

And then Harrow's fist exploded open as her construct fumbled and forgot its form, clattering into a puddle of, well, the remains of human. She breathed raggedly and dabbed the nosebleed and blood sweat away with a handkerchief, as well as that in her palm, wincing at her raw cuts.

"Think you should take a break?" Gideon said gingerly.

Harrow spared a calmer glance for her. "Yes, though I loathe to admit it. If I cannot perform this feat at my best then I certainly cannot in any lesser condition. Back to the theorem it is, then, while I recuperate," she exhaled, doing little to hide her frustrations as she threw her gloves down.

"Or - here’s an idea - you could come cuddle with me for a while and come back later!"

The side-eye that Harrow spared this time was more reluctant, as she dropped her tensed shoulders. "You would have me, dripping copious amounts of wasted blood?" Harrow asked dejectedly, still panting and staring intently at her pile of bones as if willing them to reanimate with her glare alone.

"Hey, now," Gideon said sternly as she approached Harrow. "Self-deprecation is fine and all but don't get depressed on me."

"I'm not," Harrow insisted just as stonily. "There's a stark difference between depression and momentary disappointment."

"Harrow…" Gideon said her name like a disapproving parent confronting their child, not distracted by the pedantics she placed between them.

" _Griddle_?" Harrow growled back, matching her fierce tone with a wildfire glare, warding Gideon away.

"What? I haven't done anything."

"But you're contemplating it,” said Harrow flatly.

"Alright, you got me.” Gideon rewarded her guess with a show of jazz hands. “But what are you going to do about it?"

Harrow turned fully toward her now, intent on defending herself from whatever Gideon was about to do.

"I swear, Griddle, on the Emperor’s- No! Get _away_ from me, you cretin!"

But Gideon was faster than her suddenly famished body, her arms swiftly around Harrow in a big bear hug that she had very little possibility of escaping from. Still, stubborn as the unfeeling constructs she commanded, Harrow pushed her good palm against Gideon's chest and then her face, cursing her name but breaking about into panicked and angry giggles as she was lifted up into the air by her cavalier's strong arms.

"Unhand me!" Harrow very nearly screamed at her.

"Not a chance, my twilit necroqueen. Not until you spend some time with me."

"I refuse."

"Then I refuse," Gideon snorted. As if she couldn’t match Harrowhark’s stubbornness blow for blow.

"I can make you resign," Harrow uttered ominously as she shook some bone bits from her sleeves to the floor around Gideon's feet, who promptly stepped away as skeletal fingers every bit as pale and bony as Harrow's grasped at her feet. They crawled after her but were swiftly stomped into fine powder.

"Won't be that easy, I'm afraid."

“It never is with you, is it?” Harrow opened her mouth to speak again, but thought of a more effective idea and bit Gideon's shoulder through her shirt, bypassing her formidable tolerance for pain with a sneak attack.

"OW! Bitch, you're a skeleton summoner, not a fucking vampire! Take my thanergy all you want, but not my blood!"

"I want nothing less than your thanergy, you know this. And you're my loving wife, not to mention my loyal cavalier, who should not arrest me from my comfort zone!"

"Oh, boo hoo. Hey, remember when you forcibly enlisted me as your cavalier? So much for comfort zones." Gideon bumped Harrow up over her shoulder and carried her out of her study and to any other room in the house, which currently happened to be the living room.

"You agreed!" Harrow screeched, having been over this with Gideon for the fifty-seventh time. She sighed, and reluctantly ceased her struggling. Had she not just exhausted herself with her necromancy she would have persisted for a minute longer, but she invested all of her strength into her creation earlier. "God, fine! What do you want from me?"

"All I want," Gideon said calmly, "is for you to take a short break. We could go on a walk. Finally start using that TV streaming subscription, or have some hot and steamy sex. Anything other than skelemancy right now, because your blood vessels look ready to burst."

"They won't."

"I know they won't, but that doesn't mean that you aren't straining yourself too hard, too often."

"Who is the necromancer here, Nav?” Harrow raised her voice, mustering all the steel she could from her fatigued body. “I should think that I would know my own limitations better than you."

"That doesn't mean you have to push them every time. You don't have to work yourself to the point of passing out."

"I’m afraid I do. I have set it upon myself to work triply, likely quad or quintuply as hard as anyone else if I'm to forsake Lyctorhood. I _will_ realize my potential through any and all other means, even if it means I collapse countless times on the way. Anything to avoid losing you." She whispered the last statement weakly, tired of repeating the grim possibility to herself.

Harrow's chest heaved deeply now, out of frustration and resentment and fear and shame all at once, her voice shaking out like a tree branch in a harsh gale.

"Yeah, nah. I won't let you.”

“Your role isn’t to stop me from collapsing, cav. It’s to catch me when I do.”

The cav breathed a singular, heavy breath, making Harrow float up and down on her shoulder.

“Of all the twisted, self-serving loads of shit you’ve ever tried to sell me, that one by far is the most selfish.”

Gideon’s grating tone stunned Harrow for all of half a second before she said, “And _how_ , exactly, do you suppose that is?” Harrow immediately regretted asking as Gideon hoisted her back over into a bridal-style carry, forced to meet her eyes.

“Think about the position that puts me in. You think I want to watch you drop every other day? For all I know you could be having a heart attack! What am I supposed to think if we’re in the fight for our lives and you’re suddenly collapsed on the ground? I’m your friend before your cavalier, and your girlfriend before that.”

Harrow’s eyes drifted away before shutting to hide her shame behind them, and she exhaled a tight breath. “All valid points. Sorry. Would you believe me if I said that I prioritize my own safety less than yours?”

“Yes, actually, bec-

“Wait. Dolt. I invest in you, Gideon, what little trust I am capable of. I trust you more than I trust myself. Whatever may happen to me, in my last moment of consciousness I have the utmost faith that you will pull us through, and that when I wake I will be immediately regaled with tales of your heroics.” Harrow waited for Gideon to smirk, but her lips remained straight as an edge, patient and earnest. “I would be remiss to not acknowledge that as selfish, and so all I can do is ask you to treat me in kind.”

Harrow’s voice fell low, stooped in her remorse. Then did Gideon’s grin emerge, broad as daylight as she said, “Hey- your dolt. I appreciate your faith in me, but I’ve got stock in you too you know. At the end of the day, I’m all yours, and you’re mine, and that’s about all there is to it. Right?”

Harrow merely nodded at her either intelligent or inane summation, wondering which words were more appropriate between “Yes” or “I fucking adore you, Nav”. She went with the latter, earning a warm bloom in Gideon’s cheeks.

“Coolio. Now come spend some time with me instead of for me, 'kay?"

"And how do you expect me to do so until you put me down?" Harrow muttered bitterly upon realizing she was still held in Gideon’s grip, shoulder pushing into her sturdy bicep.

"I will as soon as you promise to."

"The recent outpouring of my heart means nothing to you, then?”

“It means the world. Just wanna hear you say it.”

“Fine. Promise. Just let me go already."

And with that, Harrow was lowered back down to meet Gideon's triumphant grin. The queen of scowling retook her throne, scowled before her subject, and folded her arms.

"Wipe that accursed smirk off your face. That damn grin always invites disaster soon to follow."

"Can't. I'm afraid that it can only be kissed away."

Harrow grabbed two fistfuls of Gideon's collar and yanked her over, crashing their lips together. Harrow matched the recent outpouring of her heart with a spree of smooches.

"Well?” She gestured wildly around them, then wiped her lip. “How exactly are we spending this break together?"

"Dunno. We could keep doing that, if you want."

"Hardly," Harrow lied, that very same smirk curling her thin lips upward as she pulled Gideon close.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, u/Scout-the-Dog for the inspiration! And thank you all for reading, please tell me what you think!
> 
> (I’m now about 150 pages into the second book… wtffff is happeningggg)


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